Social media disaster for Burger King: Twitter feed says chain sold to McDonald’s

Even by the standards of social media fiascos, this one’s a doozy. On Monday, Burger King’s official Twitter feed announced the chain had been sold to its rival and began posting pro-McDonald’s messages and tales of employee drug use.

The strange Twitter activity took place after hackers apparently took control of Burger King’s account and replaced its name and image with the McDonald’s logo. Here is a screenshot of what followers of @burgerking saw on Monday:

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The blue checkmark beside the @burgerking name indicate that this is indeed Burger King’s official Twitter account. Other tweets included:

It’s accepted as common wisdom for big brands to have an active presence on social media but this incident shows how things can go very wrong. Previous Twitter disasters involve McDonald’s buying a sponsored hashtag to promote “McDStories” only to see users tell tales of gross food and alleged animal cruelty.

As of early Monday afternoon Eastern Time, the Burger King account was still under control of the hackers.

Update: At 1:15 ET, Twitter said the account had been suspended. As Frank Reed notes in the comments below, the incident may not be all bad it’s given Burger King more publicity than it’s had in a long time. And, as a hacker account notes:

With @BurgerKing getting hacked they got a 30% rase in followers, remember to unfollow.

I wish just one of these news stories would give a better explanation than just “got hacked.” How did the perps get control of the account? Did they brute force, just a luck guess, got control of the e-mail account that is backstopped, get the password from a phishing attack? Come on Gigaom, do more than the other big news outlets.

Reblogged this on Rational Arrogance and commented:
“The strange Twitter activity took place after hackers apparently took control of Burger Kingâ€™s account and replaced its name and image with the McDonaldâ€™s logo.”